Before Microsoft tried the whole "patent indemnification" trick the community was less cohesive about these important issues to Free Software.
Now, after MS has made patent agreements with several companies, GPLv3 has been released, and several companies have explicitly REFUSED to sign such patent agreements with MS, the community is more cohesive -- more understanding of the importance of Free Software and in agreement that signing such patent indemnification agreements with Microsoft is a Bad Idea(tm).
As the dust settles, there are splits: Novell sits alongside Microsoft. Alongside the FSF we see Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, and many others.
I'm excited that major vendors such as Dell and Lenovo are offering GNU/Linux pre-installed on their machines. By supporting such vendors, the Free Software community can show them that a strong demand for GNU/Linux exists. Unfortunately Lenovo will be pre-installing SuSE (from Novell) on their machines, and I encourage all of you geeks out there to WRITE to Lenovo and request that instead of SuSE they pre-install a distribution that respects Free Software such as Redhat or Ubuntu. Similarly, write to Dell and tell them that you STRONGLY appreciate the fact that they chose Ubuntu as their GNU/Linux distribution.
So to sum it up: Keep on using the software, spend your money in support of these companies, and preach the good word of Free Software. Peace. Love. Linux.
If you do in fact run the Linux kernel on your computer, why don't you take your own advice and "Please Stop Using 'GNU/Linux'" ?
I mean, if you want to just call it Linux, why don't you just rip out all of the GNU utilities that make it usable by mere mortals such as us?...unless you think you're a Seymour Cray and can hand-toggle in disk I/O and such things, of course...
Is RMS a bit outlandish? Oh, certainly. Is Linus also, shall we say...hmm...eccentric? Indubitably.
Of course, they're both brilliant geeks and we have both of them -- plus thousands of other people -- to thank for the sweet operating system we all know and love. At the end of the day all of us geeks know that the "Linux" operating system isn't just the work of Linus and the kernel team. But do other people know that? Maybe giving a little credit back isn't such a bad idea.
HTML was never designed for absolute page layout, and it still sucks at doing that (even XHTML).
Some of the css3 extensions try to do some absolute-positioning relative to page size, but that's not supported in any of the major browsers (AFAIK), and I believe that CSS3 doesn't have nearly enough features to stack up against something like ODF or OOXML. I really wish that it did, but alas...
When most people fire up the word processor on their computer they are trying to write down some words in a file. Whether they do it in a "Word Processor" or a "Desktop Publisher" or even in a basic text editor* doesn't make a lick of difference. Heck -- how many times have we all gotten an email with a Word attachment that turned out to be a list of names? Or perhaps the same thing as an Excel document?
The problem here is that computing technology has progressed to the point where it takes the same effort for someone to pick up a bazooka (MS-Word) to write a grocery list as it does for them to pick up a little stick (MS-Notepad). Honestly, it's fine with me if the average person wants to use their all-in-one program to create all of their documents (I mean, the file format might have a 60K overhead of fluff that isn't necessary for a grocery list, but disk space is cheap and application load-time is pretty small on modern hardware).
The biggest problem right now is interoperability: people need to be able to, on any device -- laptop computer, PDA, cell phone, internet cafe computer, etc... -- open all of their files, use the data, update the data, and push it back to storage or push it to someone else.
Microsoft's formats, which have been the de facto standard through widespread use, are not good at providing interoperability as they: - are proprietary/encumbered - aren't well documented - aren't well designed - aren't well implemented (even by Microsoft) - are controlled by one party
ODF has the benefit of: - being controlled by a consortium - being based on existing standards (and thus promoting interoperability) - being completely open for all to implement, bugfix, etc..
Google has been working hard on this issue of data transparency -- of users being able to get at their data (and retain relevant structure and formatting) -- for a long time. When you send email through GMail or upload files to Google Documents, Google provides multiple methods for you to view, edit, and convert these files directly in the browser.
Hopefully ODF will serve as the new standard, generated whenever Joe Blow sits down at a computer and starts to put "pen to paper". Then, whenever Joe Blow wants to pass that information around, there will be tools available to him (hopefully that work transparently) ripping that formatted data apart, mashing it together in new ways, and allowing his data to move from format to format as it goes from device to device...
ODF isn't any better than XHTML + CSS3, it's just that people are used to opening up MS-Word and typing text and poking at formatting in that paradigm. So let them. Let them start there, but with a new, open file format (ODF) that changes the computer from being something that locks them down and silos their documents into something that makes their documents more accessible.
Is ODF the be-all-end-all? Oh heck, probably not. But it's a really big step in the right direction, and it is VERY close to being accepted as THE standard by all of the major players. It sounds like there are still a few critical pieces (such as high fidelity conversion of business documents) but I believe that these issues can be overcome. For now, let's keep on working on ODF.
--W
* a text editor, unlike the other two, is a well-defined term so it doesn't have to have double-quotes patrolling its borders:-)
All the article mentions are "a pre-configured VMWare image of the OLPC OS" and some information on how to "download the OLPC OS from Red Hats [sic] servers...and configure it in Parallels."
A few months ago I downloaded a LiveCD of one of the OLPC builds and couldn't figure out why it wasn't booting on my desktop... of course, then I realized that my desktop hardware was just a wee bit different from the OLPC's hardware...:-)
Does anyone has a GENUINE link to a x86 build of OLPC OS/Sugar?
They're putting them in the hands of kids in Africa and elsewhere, but the OLPC and other pervasive technologies are going to be a big part of education-driven social and political reform in 3rd world countries. And that reform will have to take place before wired telephone and internet connections are available everywhere...
The fact that children in Africa are accessing porn is a good sign. It's f*cking AMAZING! Why? Because that means that for the first time these children are reaching out and interacting with websites and other people across the globe. If they are connected, then can receive information and they can SEND information.
Africa has huge issues with corruption. Africa has huge issues with genocide, rape, tribal warfare, dictatorships... and the list goes on. But the really great thing about technology is that while it can enable people to have guns and bullets and other tools of war, it can also give them cell phones and tiny laptops.
If more and more villages in Africa have access to technology that is not dependent upon the grid for power or for an internet connection (solar or manual power, satellite or some kind of ad-hoc network for Internet access), then that will enable communities to unite, it will enable people to be educated about relevant health, political, and social issues, and it will (hopefully) enable groups of spread-out people to push through reform of governments and pave the way for new infrastructure.
If you see a homeless person on the street, giving them a few cents might help them for a day, but the best thing you could do for them is to help them find the right path for them to take to earn money and become a contributing member of society.
There are a number of possible ways that we in the Western world could help starving children in Africa. The best way for us to help people in 3rd world countries is to give the individual people tools which enable them to organize their communities, reform their governments and companies, and build up their countries from the inside out. A generation of children communicating through small, portable, rugged computers seems like an excellent tool to jumpstart the organize-reform-build process.
And then when they are a first-world country they can have spiffy fiber-to-the-premises broadband for all, just like we do in America. Oh wait.
Hmmm... perhaps we need to start encouraging OUR kids to do some social/political reform as well!
yeah, that used to happen all the time to me as well. Because it would only happen when an articles was REALLY fresh -- no comments, nothing -- I figured it was some bug in Slash (the slashcode) that didn't atomically generate the page and the link to the page at the same time... or something.
Sounds good to me -- submit a story to/. when you come up with some good wording and good information resources to explain these concepts to congresscritters (and other not-so-geeky people).
We won't get everyone on/. writing-in, but hopefully there will be a few hundred letters in support of our Geektacular (yes, I just made that up, and it's totally a word) position. Who knows -- we might not be an 800lb gorilla, but with enough "bees" stinging the politicians we will definitely get noticed...
I give money to various FOSS projects that I use at home and work, and I have my FSF card and my EFF decoder ring, and I feel pretty good about all that, but what can I do to help promote the use and standardization of ODF over OOXML?
We all have our prejudices, and a lot of us geeks are (not unduly) suspicious of anything "open" coming out of Redmond, but to step back and compare these two formats I see ODF as a clear winner:
OOXML is controlled by one company, not a standards body.
Microsoft likes proprietary formats and has only gone the open format route because the market/industry forced them to do so.
Microsoft was invited several times to join the ODF standards committee and refused all invitations.
The OOXML format is not actually open for anyone to implement: part of the specification references proprietary file formats (older ms-office formats) and proprietary, microsoft-only code.
So what can I do to promote ODF? Write to my congresscritters? Spend some time proofing drafts of the spec?
Apple makes nice hardware, but they want to make a buck just like all the other companies with phones in that lineup. The chart was pretty, but what I'd really like to see is some independent site doing a reasonably fair comparison.
The second a prior idiot played with a cigar, they tried impeaching him. I don't know about you but a cigar is nothing in comparison...
William the Clinton engaged in what I like to term "consensual romping". Bush's administration is engaging in what I like to term "unconsensual reaming of our civil rights with a broom handle" and "force-feeding us ash from a burned copy of the Bill of Rights".
Delightful stuff, really.
Now to be fair, some of these programs allowing unlawful and unwarranted intrusions into our privacy were started during Clinton's tenure as President... so there's more than one person to blame here.
If is so rough that I found two typos in the known bugs.
I found a typo, too!:)
All joking aside, the terms 'alpha' and 'beta' don't mean what they used to -- I mean, GMail's logo still says 'BETA' on it, but it's not really in "beta mode" anymore...
I'm not really sure what 'alpha' means... but I must commend the OpenOffice people for pushing this release out the door. The reason why this is so important is that the porting project finally has something released that builds using Aqua. It's not just a pipe dream...there's actually something that people can start up and look at (even if they can't use most of the features yet) that is a native version of OOo for OSX.
Even if it's a little rough at first, this build is a good start. The porting people need to make small goals, meet them, and move to the next goal. Now that the project has met this big, visible milestone, I think that (Mac) users will be much more willing to donate money to push this porting project along...
Above all, stay legal. Figure out what's legal to do, and do it. If calling you a lot isn't harrassment, take it to a judge for a quick decision. Don't spend too much money, but get that on the court records so that when you "Take it up a notch," you can point to that ruling and say "Look -- what else was I supposed to do?"
1. Get Information
I would suggest playing along for a while and trying to get people's names, phone numbers, addresses, etc... Ask for the name of the person calling. Ask for their business' name, their address, their boss's name, their phone #. What company or person are they hiring for?
Accumulate as much information as possible. Keep on asking for stuff (social security #'s? Credit Card #'s?) until they won't give anymore.
2. Get Mobilized
If the company calling you is local, great! Otherwise -- find some friends in the city where these people work or live. Go to their place of business and get to work.
I suggest:
brochures? Take 'em all. You should be justified in taking at least (1) for each time they have called you.
front desk: talk to them. Keep on talking. Come back. Everyday. Ask if you can hire them.
parking lot: talk to them. Keep on talking. If phone calling isn't harrassment, then talking to them face to face in the parking lot probably isn't, either.
home: if they were brainless enough to give you a home address or phone #, visit or call them there -- probably just one brief visit (remember: use their spiel back on them -- don't be rude or threatening) will be enough to get them to stop calling you.
3. Win
Oh -- two more hints: 1. Call the Better Business Bureau on these people (not sure if it would help) 2. Try calling up your state legislature and asking them to make it illegal to harass businesses over the phone. This harassment is hurting your business, which in turn hurts the economy of your state, so I feel like they would have an interest in stopping this kind of flagrant pestering...
It sounds like this bookstore owner is trying to get people thinking and talking about the importance of books through a very noticeable stunt.
Penn and Teller have a skit (Vegas version, West Wing version) about the American flag that I love. It's a great skit because it uses shock value to remind us about the freedoms granted to everyone in the US. Perhaps the booksellers here are trying to do something similar -- to capture the attention of the 'Ooooh, Shiny!' generation and make them stop and think for a second about books.
Penn and Teller have lovely presentation... perhaps the bookseller could take a few cues from them and make sure that his book burning stunt is seen as a moral message and not misinterpreted as some hair-brained, air-polluting, ill-conceived plan.
I'm in the market for a new laptop, but unfortunately the E1505 is too large and heavy for my needs -- the base weight is 6.18lbs! Dell should really consider adding something smaller and lighter to the ubuntu-supported mix. How about the Latitude D420 ?
A hammer is a useful tool. Like many other items (laptop, telephone, car wheel, tree) it can be used as a blunt trauma weapon... however we aren't going to just get rid of all of our pipes, trees, and wheels tomorrow. Sheesh!
This story reminds me of the (current) US-Presidential-hopeful who would like to ban all guns and knives -- even kitchen knives. That guy has no idea of what would replace the knife (he said that our engineers should be smart enough to think up something...). What does the administration of this High School expect people to use to put in nails? A nail gun, ala Quake?
So what can you do to fight against this stupidity? Simple... just follow these steps:
1. Get out your hammer. 2. Use paint or sharpie to write "09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0" on the handle.* 3. Carry the hammer around tomorrow.
* ProTip: Make sure the writing is on the outside of the handle so it's visible when it's stuck in your hammer loop -- you do have a hammer loop on your jeans/overalls/kilt, right?:)
AAC was developed by some of the same audio experts that created the original MP3 standard...[i]t was adopted as an open standard a decade ago this year...Royalty payments are required for using the MP3 format for distributed content, but no licenses or fees are required to stream or distribute content in AAC, making it a more attractive format...
Yes, there are no licensing fees for streaming or distributing AAC files, however, according to Wikipedia:
...a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs...It is for this reason FOSS implementations such as FAAC and FAAD are distributed in source form only, in order to avoid patent infringement.
So while AAC is not a "proprietary" file format, because the specification is freely available, I would consider it only "partially open", as actually doing anything with the spec (such as building an encoder or decoder) is illegal without an additional license.
Overall, Chiariglione writes very well and has some interesting ideas. But my approval of his ideas started to wane when I read this line:
He recognises that a DRM (protection) system that is transparent to the user would be an advantage to them. After all the DVD's CSS does exactly that, were it not for the unfortunate "region code".
No, Leonardo, the DVD CSS system is *not* transparent to the user, especially if you are using a Free Software operating system. I agree that the region-coding is sucky, and several multi-region settop boxes exist, but you didn't go far enough: the DVD CSS scheme (and the DRM schemes on HD-DVD and on Blu-ray) are NOT transparent to all users out there.
Let's continue...
The way to go is to have a standard system like GSM that anybody can practical [sic] implement
Well I did some digging on the 3gpp FAQ and I think I found some answers (although if someone wants to correct me or do some digging, I'd be very appreciative.
The basic standards seem to be freely available (although their answer to this question is damn cryptic!): "Does a company implementing..have to pay any royalties..?", Answer: "[3gpp] is not a legal entity but a Partnership...between...standardization organizations in the field of telecommunications."
The GSM specs seem to include patents which are RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) licensed. AFAIK, RAND licensing is incompatible with most Free Software licenses...
So again, no, Leonardo. GSM is *not* an Open Specification that anyone can implement. It is encumbered with patents.
Continuing, we have:
do you think that we would have had the MP3 phenomenon without the MP3 standard or the billions of video files taken by cell phones - and shared - without the MP4 standard?
Yes, I think that the "personal" music and video revolutions could have happened without the specific MP3 and MP4 standards. Having a standard enables people to share audio and video, true. But even if those standards weren't ones that were patent-encumbered (such as MP3 and MP4), the revolution would have taken place once the hardware (iPods, cell phones, digital cameras) were small enough and portable enough for people to take with them everywhere.
It would be really hard to define a "one size fits all" DRM standard.
Actually, I think it would be easy: Let people license their files however they want, but don't encrypt, watermark, or otherwise f*ck with the contents of the files. That is to say, take the "restriction" out of DRM.
Leonardo Chiariglione sounds like a smart guy who is trying to work on creating international standards, and for that I applaud him. But I'd like him to go a bit farther and to make TRULY OPEN standards that anyone can implement, for any reason, on any hardware, without paying anything...that's what a standard should be -- not something locked down with encumbrances that prevent people from using it.
This page on linux.org mentions several LUGs in Russia that could help teachers, students, and others learn how to use Linux.
The article on mosnews.com mentions that
Schools in the Perm region will soon quit buying software from commercial companies
And in fact there is a LUG in Perm -- contact info is for victor_v [at] permonline.ru, and they have a website here. The news page on the site hasn't been updated since 1999, but hopefully "Victor V" is still around and could perhaps give a crash course to the teachers.
Of course, once students get their hands on the Linux boxes, they'll probably just teach themselves how to use it (gotta love how kids can learn new things so quickly:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Before Microsoft tried the whole "patent indemnification" trick the community was less cohesive about these important issues to Free Software.
Now, after MS has made patent agreements with several companies, GPLv3 has been released, and several companies have explicitly REFUSED to sign such patent agreements with MS, the community is more cohesive -- more understanding of the importance of Free Software and in agreement that signing such patent indemnification agreements with Microsoft is a Bad Idea(tm).
As the dust settles, there are splits: Novell sits alongside Microsoft. Alongside the FSF we see Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, and many others.
I'm excited that major vendors such as Dell and Lenovo are offering GNU/Linux pre-installed on their machines. By supporting such vendors, the Free Software community can show them that a strong demand for GNU/Linux exists. Unfortunately Lenovo will be pre-installing SuSE (from Novell) on their machines, and I encourage all of you geeks out there to WRITE to Lenovo and request that instead of SuSE they pre-install a distribution that respects Free Software such as Redhat or Ubuntu. Similarly, write to Dell and tell them that you STRONGLY appreciate the fact that they chose Ubuntu as their GNU/Linux distribution.
So to sum it up:
Keep on using the software, spend your money in support of these companies, and preach the good word of Free Software.
Peace. Love. Linux.
So, A.C., I see we meet again!
...unless you think you're a Seymour Cray and can hand-toggle in disk I/O and such things, of course...
If you do in fact run the Linux kernel on your computer, why don't you take your own advice and "Please Stop Using 'GNU/Linux'" ?
I mean, if you want to just call it Linux, why don't you just rip out all of the GNU utilities that make it usable by mere mortals such as us?
Is RMS a bit outlandish? Oh, certainly.
Is Linus also, shall we say...hmm...eccentric? Indubitably.
Of course, they're both brilliant geeks and we have both of them -- plus thousands of other people -- to thank for the sweet operating system we all know and love. At the end of the day all of us geeks know that the "Linux" operating system isn't just the work of Linus and the kernel team. But do other people know that? Maybe giving a little credit back isn't such a bad idea.
...as long as the bad guys aren't allowed to have mirrors.
HTML was never designed for absolute page layout, and it still sucks at doing that (even XHTML).
:-)
Some of the css3 extensions try to do some absolute-positioning relative to page size, but that's not supported in any of the major browsers (AFAIK), and I believe that CSS3 doesn't have nearly enough features to stack up against something like ODF or OOXML. I really wish that it did, but alas...
When most people fire up the word processor on their computer they are trying to write down some words in a file. Whether they do it in a "Word Processor" or a "Desktop Publisher" or even in a basic text editor* doesn't make a lick of difference. Heck -- how many times have we all gotten an email with a Word attachment that turned out to be a list of names? Or perhaps the same thing as an Excel document?
The problem here is that computing technology has progressed to the point where it takes the same effort for someone to pick up a bazooka (MS-Word) to write a grocery list as it does for them to pick up a little stick (MS-Notepad). Honestly, it's fine with me if the average person wants to use their all-in-one program to create all of their documents (I mean, the file format might have a 60K overhead of fluff that isn't necessary for a grocery list, but disk space is cheap and application load-time is pretty small on modern hardware).
The biggest problem right now is interoperability: people need to be able to, on any device -- laptop computer, PDA, cell phone, internet cafe computer, etc... -- open all of their files, use the data, update the data, and push it back to storage or push it to someone else.
Microsoft's formats, which have been the de facto standard through widespread use, are not good at providing interoperability as they:
- are proprietary/encumbered
- aren't well documented
- aren't well designed
- aren't well implemented (even by Microsoft)
- are controlled by one party
ODF has the benefit of:
- being controlled by a consortium
- being based on existing standards (and thus promoting interoperability)
- being completely open for all to implement, bugfix, etc..
Google has been working hard on this issue of data transparency -- of users being able to get at their data (and retain relevant structure and formatting) -- for a long time. When you send email through GMail or upload files to Google Documents, Google provides multiple methods for you to view, edit, and convert these files directly in the browser.
Hopefully ODF will serve as the new standard, generated whenever Joe Blow sits down at a computer and starts to put "pen to paper". Then, whenever Joe Blow wants to pass that information around, there will be tools available to him (hopefully that work transparently) ripping that formatted data apart, mashing it together in new ways, and allowing his data to move from format to format as it goes from device to device...
ODF isn't any better than XHTML + CSS3, it's just that people are used to opening up MS-Word and typing text and poking at formatting in that paradigm. So let them. Let them start there, but with a new, open file format (ODF) that changes the computer from being something that locks them down and silos their documents into something that makes their documents more accessible.
Is ODF the be-all-end-all? Oh heck, probably not. But it's a really big step in the right direction, and it is VERY close to being accepted as THE standard by all of the major players. It sounds like there are still a few critical pieces (such as high fidelity conversion of business documents) but I believe that these issues can be overcome. For now, let's keep on working on ODF.
--W
* a text editor, unlike the other two, is a well-defined term so it doesn't have to have double-quotes patrolling its borders
Ummm... there's no LiveCD there.
:-)
All the article mentions are "a pre-configured VMWare image of the OLPC OS" and some information on how to "download the OLPC OS from Red Hats [sic] servers...and configure it in Parallels."
A few months ago I downloaded a LiveCD of one of the OLPC builds and couldn't figure out why it wasn't booting on my desktop... of course, then I realized that my desktop hardware was just a wee bit different from the OLPC's hardware...
Does anyone has a GENUINE link to a x86 build of OLPC OS/Sugar?
They're putting them in the hands of kids in Africa and elsewhere, but the OLPC and other pervasive technologies are going to be a big part of education-driven social and political reform in 3rd world countries. And that reform will have to take place before wired telephone and internet connections are available everywhere...
The fact that children in Africa are accessing porn is a good sign. It's f*cking AMAZING! Why? Because that means that for the first time these children are reaching out and interacting with websites and other people across the globe. If they are connected, then can receive information and they can SEND information.
Africa has huge issues with corruption. Africa has huge issues with genocide, rape, tribal warfare, dictatorships... and the list goes on. But the really great thing about technology is that while it can enable people to have guns and bullets and other tools of war, it can also give them cell phones and tiny laptops.
If more and more villages in Africa have access to technology that is not dependent upon the grid for power or for an internet connection (solar or manual power, satellite or some kind of ad-hoc network for Internet access), then that will enable communities to unite, it will enable people to be educated about relevant health, political, and social issues, and it will (hopefully) enable groups of spread-out people to push through reform of governments and pave the way for new infrastructure.
If you see a homeless person on the street, giving them a few cents might help them for a day, but the best thing you could do for them is to help them find the right path for them to take to earn money and become a contributing member of society.
There are a number of possible ways that we in the Western world could help starving children in Africa. The best way for us to help people in 3rd world countries is to give the individual people tools which enable them to organize their communities, reform their governments and companies, and build up their countries from the inside out. A generation of children communicating through small, portable, rugged computers seems like an excellent tool to jumpstart the organize-reform-build process.
And then when they are a first-world country they can have spiffy fiber-to-the-premises broadband for all, just like we do in America. Oh wait.
Hmmm... perhaps we need to start encouraging OUR kids to do some social/political reform as well!
yeah, that used to happen all the time to me as well. Because it would only happen when an articles was REALLY fresh -- no comments, nothing -- I figured it was some bug in Slash (the slashcode) that didn't atomically generate the page and the link to the page at the same time... or something.
Sounds good to me -- submit a story to /. when you come up with some good wording and good information resources to explain these concepts to congresscritters (and other not-so-geeky people).
/. writing-in, but hopefully there will be a few hundred letters in support of our Geektacular (yes, I just made that up, and it's totally a word) position. Who knows -- we might not be an 800lb gorilla, but with enough "bees" stinging the politicians we will definitely get noticed...
We won't get everyone on
We all have our prejudices, and a lot of us geeks are (not unduly) suspicious of anything "open" coming out of Redmond, but to step back and compare these two formats I see ODF as a clear winner:
So what can I do to promote ODF? Write to my congresscritters? Spend some time proofing drafts of the spec?
- Price
- # of carriers on which the system is supported
- Available SDK for developers
Apple makes nice hardware, but they want to make a buck just like all the other companies with phones in that lineup. The chart was pretty, but what I'd really like to see is some independent site doing a reasonably fair comparison.Mod parent up!
William the Clinton engaged in what I like to term "consensual romping". Bush's administration is engaging in what I like to term "unconsensual reaming of our civil rights with a broom handle" and "force-feeding us ash from a burned copy of the Bill of Rights".
Delightful stuff, really.
Now to be fair, some of these programs allowing unlawful and unwarranted intrusions into our privacy were started during Clinton's tenure as President... so there's more than one person to blame here.
I found a typo, too!
All joking aside, the terms 'alpha' and 'beta' don't mean what they used to -- I mean, GMail's logo still says 'BETA' on it, but it's not really in "beta mode" anymore...
I'm not really sure what 'alpha' means... but I must commend the OpenOffice people for pushing this release out the door.
The reason why this is so important is that the porting project finally has something released that builds using Aqua. It's not just a pipe dream...there's actually something that people can start up and look at (even if they can't use most of the features yet) that is a native version of OOo for OSX.
Even if it's a little rough at first, this build is a good start. The porting people need to make small goals, meet them, and move to the next goal. Now that the project has met this big, visible milestone, I think that (Mac) users will be much more willing to donate money to push this porting project along...
1. Get Information
I would suggest playing along for a while and trying to get people's names, phone numbers, addresses, etc... Ask for the name of the person calling. Ask for their business' name, their address, their boss's name, their phone #. What company or person are they hiring for?
Accumulate as much information as possible. Keep on asking for stuff (social security #'s? Credit Card #'s?) until they won't give anymore.
2. Get Mobilized
If the company calling you is local, great! Otherwise -- find some friends in the city where these people work or live. Go to their place of business and get to work.
I suggest:
3. Win
Oh -- two more hints:
1. Call the Better Business Bureau on these people (not sure if it would help)
2. Try calling up your state legislature and asking them to make it illegal to harass businesses over the phone. This harassment is hurting your business, which in turn hurts the economy of your state, so I feel like they would have an interest in stopping this kind of flagrant pestering...
It sounds like this bookstore owner is trying to get people thinking and talking about the importance of books through a very noticeable stunt.
Penn and Teller have a skit (Vegas version, West Wing version) about the American flag that I love. It's a great skit because it uses shock value to remind us about the freedoms granted to everyone in the US. Perhaps the booksellers here are trying to do something similar -- to capture the attention of the 'Ooooh, Shiny!' generation and make them stop and think for a second about books.
Penn and Teller have lovely presentation... perhaps the bookseller could take a few cues from them and make sure that his book burning stunt is seen as a moral message and not misinterpreted as some hair-brained, air-polluting, ill-conceived plan.
I think you confused grams with kilograms...
0.7 inches = approx. 18 mm
2.25 pounds = approx. 1.02 kg
Here are some URLs for the Dell models listed:
Dimension E520 Desktop - $370+
Inspiron E1505 Laptop - $700+
XPS 410 Desktop - $900+
I'm in the market for a new laptop, but unfortunately the E1505 is too large and heavy for my needs -- the base weight is 6.18lbs! Dell should really consider adding something smaller and lighter to the ubuntu-supported mix. How about the Latitude D420 ?
I think that /. should start the next batch of userids at 9991102997493599841569563568800.
:)
That way, we can just refer to "Slashdot::<someone's username>" instead of spouting out the number...
Got an address for him?
I'll totally make up a shirt and send it...
A hammer is a useful tool. Like many other items (laptop, telephone, car wheel, tree) it can be used as a blunt trauma weapon... however we aren't going to just get rid of all of our pipes, trees, and wheels tomorrow. Sheesh!
:)
This story reminds me of the (current) US-Presidential-hopeful who would like to ban all guns and knives -- even kitchen knives. That guy has no idea of what would replace the knife (he said that our engineers should be smart enough to think up something...). What does the administration of this High School expect people to use to put in nails? A nail gun, ala Quake?
So what can you do to fight against this stupidity? Simple... just follow these steps:
1. Get out your hammer.
2. Use paint or sharpie to write "09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0" on the handle.*
3. Carry the hammer around tomorrow.
* ProTip: Make sure the writing is on the outside of the handle so it's visible when it's stuck in your hammer loop -- you do have a hammer loop on your jeans/overalls/kilt, right?
From the article:
Yes, there are no licensing fees for streaming or distributing AAC files, however, according to Wikipedia:
So while AAC is not a "proprietary" file format, because the specification is freely available, I would consider it only "partially open", as actually doing anything with the spec (such as building an encoder or decoder) is illegal without an additional license.
No, Leonardo, the DVD CSS system is *not* transparent to the user, especially if you are using a Free Software operating system. I agree that the region-coding is sucky, and several multi-region settop boxes exist, but you didn't go far enough: the DVD CSS scheme (and the DRM schemes on HD-DVD and on Blu-ray) are NOT transparent to all users out there.
Let's continue...
Well I did some digging on the 3gpp FAQ and I think I found some answers (although if someone wants to correct me or do some digging, I'd be very appreciative.So again, no, Leonardo. GSM is *not* an Open Specification that anyone can implement. It is encumbered with patents.
Continuing, we have:
Yes, I think that the "personal" music and video revolutions could have happened without the specific MP3 and MP4 standards. Having a standard enables people to share audio and video, true. But even if those standards weren't ones that were patent-encumbered (such as MP3 and MP4), the revolution would have taken place once the hardware (iPods, cell phones, digital cameras) were small enough and portable enough for people to take with them everywhere.
Actually, I think it would be easy: Let people license their files however they want, but don't encrypt, watermark, or otherwise f*ck with the contents of the files. That is to say, take the "restriction" out of DRM.
Leonardo Chiariglione sounds like a smart guy who is trying to work on creating international standards, and for that I applaud him. But I'd like him to go a bit farther and to make TRULY OPEN standards that anyone can implement, for any reason, on any hardware, without paying anything...that's what a standard should be -- not something locked down with encumbrances that prevent people from using it.
The article on mosnews.com mentions that
And in fact there is a LUG in Perm -- contact info is for victor_v [at] permonline.ru, and they have a website here. The news page on the site hasn't been updated since 1999, but hopefully "Victor V" is still around and could perhaps give a crash course to the teachers.
Of course, once students get their hands on the Linux boxes, they'll probably just teach themselves how to use it (gotta love how kids can learn new things so quickly
I'd tell you, but then I would lose my super position on Slashdot.